Putin’s foreign legion Russia is shifting its little green men to Syria.

For Putin, the foreign legion, particularly bolstered by Cuban professionals, means that he can use proxy fighters to fight ground wars in place of young Russians, who have no desire to die in a faraway land that has no real meaning for them. An added advantage is that he transfers a highly armed team of thugs away from the porous Russian border. There’s no telling what kind of mischief they could cause on Russian soil. Let’s see how this works out for him.


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New York Times Mentions Benghazi For the First Time in Four Days

In its Libya Warnings Were Plentiful, but Unspecific, the New York Times broke its four day embargo on the use of the word “Benghazi.” Those expecting a discussion of a possible cover up by the administration and the curious sticking to the “video story” were due for a disappointment. The article was exclusively about security arrangements and the difficulty of gauging the security threat to our embassy facilities in Libya.

American voters know about the changing administration accounts in the month following the Benghazi attacks and are curious. They must look elsewhere from the Times to get answers.

Now Benghazi Is the Intelligence Community's Fault?

The administration is now releasing top secret intelligence memos to demonstrate that Ambassador Rice’s  September 16 talk show statements were the result of bad intelligence (Early Uncertainty on Libya Account, WSJ, October 19). 

If our intelligence community could not debrief consulate personnel, interview eye witnesses, examine the surveillance camera and drone satellite tapes, talk with Libyan officials within five days after the attack, this in itself is a national scandal of huge proportions. 

The New York Times October 16 Election-Year Stakes Overshadow Nuances of Libya Investigation had already completed this work within a day of the attack (but chose not to share its results with its readers). 
We must ask why exculpatory secret intelligence information is being released now to aid the President’s campaign and why our intelligence community purports to have been asleep at the wheel, especially after one of their top officials had already testified under oath that this was clearly a terrorist attack. 

Why is the intelligence community falling on its sword to help the President get reelected?

My Arab April Spring Scorecard

Losses:

Syria’s Assad remains in power despite (thanks to?) brutal suppression. The modest sanctions imposed on his regime will make no difference. Despite Assad’s close alliance with Iran, the political assassinations in Lebanon, and support of Hezbollah, the strange argument still prevails that we would be worse off without the “potential reformer” Assad.

Bad Mistakes:

The Egyptian military’s decision to try Mubarak and the international court indictment of Kaddafi send the message that dictators should hold on to power until their last breath. There is no such thing as a graceful exit. Yemen’s President Saleh got the message and is now refusing to resign. Kaddafi and sons have received the message as well.

Unlikely Wins:

Egypt’s military understands that real democracy can cost it its control of Egypt’s economy and wealth. It will not allow liberal democratic forces time to form real political parties. Egypt’s military will remain in control perhaps in cahoots with the Muslim Brotherhood. They will increasingly suppress true democratic reformers in subtle but effective ways.

Possible Wins:

Even uncoordinated and weak support from NATO is preventing a defeat of rebel forces by Kaddafi loyalists. As hostilities drag on, a missile is likely to get Kaddafi. Until that happens, there will be a protracted civil war in Libya. If Kaddafi is not killed, NATO countries will lose the will to fight and Kaddafi survives.

Let’s Face It. Gaddafi Has Won

As the Western powers dither and deliberate, Gaddafi has won. He will stay in power even if we establish no-fly zones or impose sanctions with sharp teeth. Short of actual invasion, Gaddafi will stay in power and will likely pass his power on to his sons when he dies. The Western press will continue to hope as a civil war continues, but its outcome is preordained.

There is a prominent historical pattern which explains why Gaddafi has won. There are virtually no cases of unconstrained dictators being overthrown. An unconstrained dictator is a Stalin, a Kim Il Sung, a Saddam, and a Gaddafi who is willing to take any measure, no matter how brutal or repulsive, to stay in power.

The state security organizations of unconstrained dictators reach even down into neighborhoods and report directly to them; prison or worse is the price even modest dissidents pay; they shoot first, not particularly worrying whether their victim is a threat or not. They make the price of resistance of any kind so high that only a brave few are willing to take the risk. Any potential rival is a dead man.

These brutal measures have served unconstrained dictators well. Stalin in his three decades of rule faced not a single assassination attempt. (There were two attempts on Lenin’s life in the early days of Bolshevik power. He had not yet had time to build his state security network). Father and son, Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, ruled North Korea for a half century despite incredible economic failure and deprivation of their people too downtrodden to resist.

The recent events in the Middle East have taught us a new and bitter lesson: Even mass popular uprisings are not enough to topple an unconstrained dictator. We had hoped that popular uprisings would eventually topple the Iranian mullahs, Syria’s Assad, and Kim Il Sung. The Libyan experience proves that they can survive almost an entire nation rising up against them. They do so by killing as many people as necessary and by placing a high price on any form of resistance.

Popular uprisings are, however, sufficient to topple constrained dictators, as Mubarak’s experience in Egypt shows. Earlier the constrained Shah fell to a popular uprising and even the East German dictatorship was unwilling to use force against demonstrators in Leipzig.

The few cases of overthrow of unconstrained dictator take the form of internal coups and invasions. The Romanian dictator Ceausescu was shot dead by his inner circle after being booed by a crowd. Beria, Stalin’s head of state security, was executed by his Kremlin colleagues, when he tried to succeed the deceased Stalin. Hitler committed suicide before Soviet troops reached his bunker.

What signal does past and current history send to constrained dictators? What message does it send to Chavez in Venezuela, Ortega in Nicaragua, Hamas in Lebanon, or Assad in Syria? The message is that only the most vicious and brutal dictators survive. There is no payoff from restraint. “Reforms” will do them no good and are to the contrary quite dangerous. They will heed Machiavelli’s advice that the “prince must learn to be less good..

A Libyan civil war will likely follow the pattern of the Russian civil war. In this civil war, there were almost a half million executions, as the Red Army and the Cheka carried out Lenin’s Red Terror. The White forces were divided and more timid (except the Cossacks, who matched the Reds in brutality). The interventionist forces used only half measures and pulled out with their tales between their legs. Tribal enmity will likely keep a Libyan war going for a while but the outcome is not in question.

If history shows that palace coups are the most likely way to topple an unconstrained dictator, should US policy aim at promoting an insider conspiracy among Gaddafi's lieutenants? I am sure that Gaddafi has organized his state security to prevent just that. The odds of an outsider successfully organizing a palace coup are about zero. Even if a palace coup worked, the result would likely be a new leader slightly less bad than Gaddafi.